Shout out to Kraken

Last week I got an email from Kraken saying that they became licensed by the Bank of Ireland as an E-money institution (EMI license). This license is automatically valid and acknowledged by all other EU member states.

In practice it means that every EU customer of kraken has their own “bank account” with their own IBAN. So if someone is making EUR denominated deposits to their kraken account they are now making a transfer between two accounts of their own. The account is in your name, it supports SEPA instant transfers and all regulations and protections that would be applicable to a bank account apply to this as well. The implications are that if I parked say 50k Eur into my kraken account (with an intention to buy some crypto later) as long as it is still FIAT all protections apply.

I welcome this change and my regular bank can no longer easily deny my transfers to Kraken. It is also much safer for a regular crypto investor in the EU.

Disclaimer: for the crypto portion of your holdings these are still not regulated and thus the above-mentioned protections do not apply. So it’s is safe to hold FIAT in your kraken account but it still might the reasonable to withdraw your crypto assets.